The connected car market is shaping up as the next major battlefield in mobile communications, as leading players jostle for position by creating alliances and promoting their own platforms. There is expectation of rapid growth over the next five to 10 years as vehicle connectivity extends from the luxury sector to embrace low-priced models. Machina Research, a consultancy in emerging M2M and Internet of Things markets, predicts that 90% of cars will be connected by 2020, compared with 10% today. This will mean that, we will fast become accustomed to always being best-connected (through cellular or Wi-Fi), depending on which network provides the best infotainment, navigation, control or monitoring service for, example road safety and fault detection in the vehicle. Many device makers and Mobile OS companies are treating the connected car much like a branch of the handset business to be commandeered with the aim of shutting out rivals.
So we find Apple touting its CarPlay, launched in March 2014 as a way of using your tethered iPhone in the car by projecting the iPhone’s UI onto the car’s in-dash display, yet optimized for integrating cars into its existing mobile ecosystem. This prompted Google to bring forward the launch of its equivalent Android Auto, unveiled in June 2014 at its annual conference for software developers in San Francisco. Google had prepared the ground for this by launching the Open Automotive Alliance (OAA) in January 2014, although this is actually no more open than its similar Open Handset Alliance introduced in 2007 to foster competition with the iPhone.
Sandwiched in between these two launches came Microsoft’s offering, “Windows in the Car,” unveiled in April 2014, again in San Francisco at its developers’ conference. All three have attracted powerful partners among automotive manufacturers, Ford for Microsoft, BMW, GM and Honda for Apple, while Google has Audi, along with Honda and GM hedging their bets. Hyundai is also an important partner for Google regarding the support for Android Auto into the head-unit, which is typically at the centre of the dashboard where the car sound system is located. The head unit will be the hub of the connected car, quite likely with in-vehicle embedded cellular and Wi-Fi modules to enable streaming navigational and infotainment applications controllable by voice commands or buttons located on the steering wheel.
These attempts to promote one essentially proprietary ecosystem over others, made some sense for the handset market where consumers can effectively choose between them according to the smartphone they prefer, or the cellular service they subscribe to. But for the connected car it is a hindrance to service and market development because it duplicates development efforts by the automobile OEM and locks them into proprietary solutions while reducing choice for consumers. With smartphone tethering quite likely to feature in the connected car, even with in-vehicle embedded versions, it raises the question of whether users with an Android phone would be disadvantaged if their car only supported Apple’s CarPlay. The same could certainly apply the other way round, given Google’s statement that it was “developing new Android platform features that will enable the car itself to become a connected Android device.” For the tethered connection a neutral model is required where a consumer could project and interact with a smartphone via their in-dash head end, regardless of the smartphone or OS. This would likely be appreciated by the consumer who wants to use his Android phone in his newly purchased Mercedes sedan.
Clearly nothing is going to stop Apple, Google, Microsoft and others from ploughing on with their own initiatives, given how much is at stake competitively in the nascent connected car market. We can at least hope though that they agree to common standards that will foster true interoperability within the connected car ecosystem, so that all handsets, mobile networks and third party services can equally serve a given vehicle, giving the owners a full choice. After all a car lasts a lot longer than a given handset and may change hands several times, so it is undesirable that connectivity imposes any sort of lock-in to specific devices or proprietary ecosystems.
I argued this point in one of my previous blogs which highlights the importance of the Automotive and Web Platform Business Group formed early in 2013 as the source of standards based on HTML5 as the foundation for web based in-car services. This group published the first drafts of its data interface and API for information services in May 2014. It is imperative that the connected car industry coalesces around these standards. This will liberate key players, including vehicle OEMs and manufacturers themselves, as well as service and app providers, to concentrate on quality of experience and ease of use, while solution providers focus on the Customer Experience through their secure connection and service management products.
This article was originally published in Birdstep's Blog.
